[LiSA-Users] LISA on Asus router hardware

[Radu Rendec]

Hi Shaiful,

Please find my answers below.

On Fri, 2013-05-24 at 22:42 +0800, Shaiful Hashim wrote:

> To be honest I haven't installed OpenWRT on RT N-16 yet but based on
> the following website on DebWRT (a version of OpenWRT running full
> Debian) does supports it:
> 
> 
> http://debwrt.net/wiki/AsusRT-N16
> 

Ok, maybe there's parallel/separate work on debwrt for supporting the
Asus N-16 - I really have no idea. But looking at the link you gave me
and then at the link at the end of that page, in the "Network
Interfaces" section
[ http://debwrt.net/browser/trunk/debian/package/debwrt-net/etc/network/interfaces.broadcom ] I can see that the box uses the old robo-switch framework (dedicated to broadcom 44xx hardware switches), which we're not going to support in LiSA. You can find more info about the 2 frameworks here: http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/uci/network#switch

> I'm very interested if you guys manage to integrate LISA with OpenWRT,
> please keep me posted. Personally, I don't have any preference on the
> type of SOHO router, as long as it has 4 LAN ports.
> 

We've just spent the last evening analyzing various devices and what can
be supported on each of them. We're going to do the development on
carambola [ http://8devices.com/carambola ] but also deploy and test on
the Linksys WRT160NL
[ http://support.linksys.com/en-us/support/routers/WRT160NL ]. It has 4
LAN port, so it should be ok for you. It also has an usb port, which
means you can connect an usb stick and fit much more software than the
embedded 8 MB flash image.

I'll keep you posted about our progress.

> Just wondering, how about the routing mechanism in LISA and OpenWRT,
> will there be any conflict?
> 

Actually LiSA doesn't have its own routing mechanism. In the initial
implementation (back in 2005) we only supported our own kernel module as
the switching engine. This kernel module provides per-vlan virtual
interfaces, which can be used pretty much like any other interface
(netdevice) in linux. Among many other things, this means that you can
assign IP addresses to them, and then use the standard routing mechanism
in the linux kernel.

For OpenWRT, we're only aiming at controlling the embedded switch for
now (adding/removing vlans, setting interface in access/trunk mode,
configuring interface vlans, etc). Our changes will have zero impact on
routing, since it will be handled through the 802.1q virtual interfaces
over eth0, just like before.

> From LISA website, it is mentioned that it has built-in support for
> BGP and OSPF, are you planning to support RIP in the future? For my
> class it is imperative to compare both OSPF and RIP routing protocols.
> 

Well, yes and no :) The website says that "the device should ... run
dynamic routing protocols such as OSPF and BGP", but we didn't say we
wanted to reimplement them :) They are already supported by quagga
(zebra) [ http://www.mangob2b.com/en/zebra | http://www.quagga.net/ ]
and work quite well. It also has a cisco-like cli and most commands are
identical with cisco. It supports RIP as well.

What we plan to do is integrate lisa with zebra, but this means just to
be able to run all commands from a single cli and nothing more. Right
now lisa and zebra are fully inter-operable (I run both of them on my
home router box). You just need to use the lisa cli for everything that
is layer 2 and the zebra cli for everything that is layer 3.

Best regards,

Radu

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